One big, happy fleet [FJ]
- Thread starter Wingsley
- Start date
Actually, probably not. If they had a quality Kirk could flaunt like that, he probably would. If they are merely distinct, rather than superior in some tangible fashion, then "only twelve like her" is the best Kirk can say, and so he says it.
Timo Saloniemi
Still doesn't mean they were the only class of cruiser being operated at the time. This is basically a discussion about numbers, and there may have been factors in determining numbers that FJ was privy to and viewers weren't.
Wingsley is correct. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_States_military_aircraft#Air_Force, in the US Air Force, just for starters, there are:
- 400 T-38C trainers (and other kinds of trainers),
- 222 F-15C fighters (and other kinds of fighters), and
- 76 B-52H bombers (and no other kinds of B-52's in service).
And of course I'll take Wikipedia's word for it...
But either way, that doesn't mean Starfleet needs more small ships than large ones. It would only mean the Air Force needs more trainers than B-52's.
No, of course you shouldn't take Wikipedia's word for it. But most of that data is fully cited in the article; additionally, any data can be in error. If you have a better source with more accurate data, lay it out.
ETA: Here you go:
From http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=126, there are 546 active T-38 trainers.
From http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=101 there are 249 active F-15 fighters.
From http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=83 there 85 active B-52's.
That should put that question to rest.
To those of you who liked my chart: you're welcome! It was fun to do.
I was thinking about this and I forgot to mention above that the book Ships of the Star Fleet from Mastercom, runs with the FJTM starship lists. While the TM lists what ships were authorized by powers that be, SotSF describes what happened after those authorizations. For example, of the 68 Achernar hulls authorized, only 13 were ever built and the Tikopai design was shelved entirely until seven years after the Enterprise class refit of the Constitution class hulls were done. And of the original 43 Tikopai hulls authorized, only 33 were built.
So if you're interested in tying such things together, it has been done before... and done quite well.
--Alex
I was thinking about this and I forgot to mention above that the book Ships of the Star Fleet from Mastercom, runs with the FJTM starship lists. While the TM lists what ships were authorized by powers that be, SotSF describes what happened after those authorizations. For example, of the 68 Achernar hulls authorized, only 13 were ever built and the Tikopai design was shelved entirely until seven years after the Enterprise class refit of the Constitution class hulls were done. And of the original 43 Tikopai hulls authorized, only 33 were built.
So if you're interested in tying such things together, it has been done before... and done quite well.
--Alex
There is another possibility, provided a la TAS: let's say there was a proto-Federation before whatever happened at Axanar. Let's call it the Coalition of Planets. And let's assume that the Coalition Starfleet begat the Federation Starfleet.
Now, try this: In "Time Trap", Scotty spotted the derelict Bonaventure and exclaimed she was "the first starship with warp drive". Since the term "warp drive" was never used in ENT, and since the techno pot of gold at the end of Tripp's rainbow was to work aboard ships that could sustain the mythical Warp 7 (Archer and Tripp went so far as to toast "to Warp Seven" in "There Are the Voyages..."), then perhaps the newer Warp 7 engines would be christened "warp drive" to distinguish a new generation of what was then advanced propulsion. (The Vulcans could only sustain Warp 7 for about 15 minutes.)
So Bonaventure and her ilk, the newest Coalition starships from the 2160's, were the first generation Warp 7 engined ships. But they were smaller than their Constitution-class descendants of 80 years later. Perhaps they started out as "star cruisers" or "galactic survey cruisers", but next to the new Connies of the 2240s, these older Coalition starships would be regarded as "light cruisers".
This is all in the confines of the "FJverse", of course.
Of course, TAS was being produced concurrently with the FJTM and wasn't really referred to at all. The fact that the bridge has two doors in both incarnations is just coincidence. Franz Joseph had explicitly said as much in interviews. But there isn't much contradictions there so I suppose i doesn't really make a difference.
--Alex
--Alex
As much as I like "ENT", I don't think it's consistent with TOS much less the FJU, so it's much easier to assume Zephram Cochrane "discovered" the space warp, but did not invent warp drive, which only came later. Meanwhile other schemes were used to harness the space warp discovery, some more or less successful, some not? The ring ship Enterprise might be one example?
Also, in those scenes in TAS in which the second bridge door elements were evidently forgotten, you can see pretty clearly that the second exit is to a second bridge elevator, rather than to FJ's service corridor.
I don't believe that having USS in the ship name would equate to a Federation starship. Otherwise, the entire US Navy would be subject to that interpretation. It could very well be as Spock said, an Earth ship that had the USS in it's name, IMO.
But since we're looking at the FJ TM, it could be argued that it is incomplete as the "Forward I" hints at missing data. In FJ's universe there very well could be a huge number of Class 2, 3 and other Destroyers, Frigates, support ships. (Or a matching huge number of Class 2,3,etc Cruisers
)Personally, I think there were 12 ships like the Enterprise as Kirk said and a whole bunch of other unseen ships, some like the beveled Constitution in the diagrams, etc...
^ I agree about the missing data (although it's Foreword II 
).
I was going to bring that up, but I've brought it up several times before (here in past threads, and also on other boards), and most fans don't seem interested in that point. Personally, I think the backstory given in the Forewords can really "explain" any errors or omissions in the TM.
). I was going to bring that up, but I've brought it up several times before (here in past threads, and also on other boards), and most fans don't seem interested in that point. Personally, I think the backstory given in the Forewords can really "explain" any errors or omissions in the TM.
Or, more completely, "She was the first ship to have warp drive installed".
Since ENT shows (against many preceding fan interpretations) that saucers were already a design feature in the mid-22nd century, it has now become a bit easier to accept the TAS ship as part of the Trek continuum. It's still pretty darned difficult to make her "the first" in anything, though. For greatest compatibility with canon and FJ-style sources, perhaps we should just concentrate on this being Scotty, the "very excitable repairman"?
That is, Scotty might be ranting about some truly minor technicality here, such as the Bonaventure being the first Daredevil class ship to have her (perfectly ordinary) warp drive installed, as opposed to the Daredevil herself - a little known historical fact he likes to point out just to show off...
Timo Saloniemi
Well, the reason I bring up the warp drive is because (1: ENT's characters never used the term, often instead referring to NX-01's propulsion as a "Warp 5 Engine", and (2: Tripp repeatedly made a big deal about Warp 7, almost as if it were some kind of great goal like the Holy Grail, always out of Earth's reach.
Put the two together and it would explain why Bonaventure could be so special.
Put the two together and it would explain why Bonaventure could be so special.
IIRC Doug Drexler, I believe, suggested it was the "symmetrical warp governor" which allowed ships to break "the Time barrier" and reach warp 7-plus speeds? Maybe this can be tied into the proper term “warp drive” and is what the Bonaventure used for the first time?
...It would be fun to have one of those blue domes on the Bonaventure in that case.
Although admittedly we didn't see much of the vessel, and may have missed the dome and other features of interest. Indeed, we might even use the oft-discussed cop-out that the ship in the middle of the viewscreen is not the Bonaventure at all (since we see no name), and our heroes are actually discussing a vessel that appeared on the screen a moment before.
Or then we can simply decide that the ship on the viewscreen was built right after Cochrane's ST:FC test rig which doesn't count as a "ship" (sort of the opposite of assuming the propulsion system doesn't count as a "warp drive"), and indeed is the first ship from Earth to be propelled at warp speeds.
But the first solution explains why the ship on screen looks like she comes from the 2260s (rather than the 2160s let alone the 2060s), in terms of pennant paint, while the second one does not...
Timo Saloniemi
Although admittedly we didn't see much of the vessel, and may have missed the dome and other features of interest. Indeed, we might even use the oft-discussed cop-out that the ship in the middle of the viewscreen is not the Bonaventure at all (since we see no name), and our heroes are actually discussing a vessel that appeared on the screen a moment before.
Or then we can simply decide that the ship on the viewscreen was built right after Cochrane's ST:FC test rig which doesn't count as a "ship" (sort of the opposite of assuming the propulsion system doesn't count as a "warp drive"), and indeed is the first ship from Earth to be propelled at warp speeds.
But the first solution explains why the ship on screen looks like she comes from the 2260s (rather than the 2160s let alone the 2060s), in terms of pennant paint, while the second one does not...
Timo Saloniemi
I just wanted to follow-up on Albertese's comments, belatedly of course.
I just posted new comments in a long-running thread I started in 2008 in the "Fan Art" TrekBBS forum. The Saladin/Hermes "lollipop" design does offer a significant built-in military advantage: having a warp nacelle (or nacelles) situated on a vertical axis above (or below) the saucer provides unobstructed aft firing arcs for the ship's saucer-mounted weapons.
While I agree with what Albertese said in his earlier post, this consideration does cast FJ's early design thinking in a new light. I used to like his single-nacelled ships alot more in the past, but Roddenberry's design rules and a love of symmetry caused me to change my mind. So I revised FJ's Saladin/Hermes by giving it two nacelles instead of one, in a Stargazer-like configuration. It's still a "lollipop" design (a fan comment about the appearance on the plan view of the ship's exterior), but that looks to have some value as a destroyer-type vessel.
